This is a gorgeous old house with huge potential, but the house has not been laid out well and is in desperate need of restoration. For example, there are three bedrooms upstairs and a further bedroom downstairs, but all the bathrooms are downstairs, meaning that you have to walk down creaking old staircases in the night. This could be resolved as there is a large space between two of the bedrooms upstairs that could (with a little investment) be converted to a bathroom. The floorboards in the bedrooms are literally coming apart with several large holes in one bedroom and ad-hoc repairs across the floors.
I understand that the property is very old, but I lived in a 400-year-old farmhouse for over 12 years. I am used to old houses with low doorways and crooked walls, but there is no excuse for holes in the floorboards, ancient, low-quality furniture and poor cleanliness.
It is as though the owner has thrown together the furniture their ancestors collected over centuries and used Ikea to replace the unusable items with the cheapest possible replacements. Most of the furniture is ‘rickety’ and old at best (for example, the armchairs in the space upstairs), or extremely cheap.
The house is old, but it is not clean. There were cobwebs all over the house, and the floors and rugs are in desperate need of a deep clean. The carpet was also coming away from the main staircase.
The kitchen is nice, spacious and reasonably equipped. The bedrooms were clean with modern, comfortable beds and sufficient towels and linen. The bathrooms were clean but very basic.
The living room is borderline (Ikea sofas thrown in with tired antiques), and a tiny TV situated so that it is very hard to watch unless you sit at the other end of the room. The log-burning stove was one of the reasons I chose this house. Having moved from an old farmhouse to Dubai, I missed winter evenings by the fire. The booking confirmation email mentions 'Logs (starter pack)’, which were nowhere to be seen, but I was able to order logs using Deliveroo. The ‘study corner’ is ridiculous, an old desk littered with ancient but sadly not antique detritus and a 90’s cheap hifi, but no chair or even space to sit. The curtains throughout the house are old, dusty and dirty.
The garden was lovely, but I fear more attention is paid to maintaining the garden than the house and furniture.
I feel that this is a little cash cow for the owners who live abroad and want to minimise their investment and maximise their margins.
This property is not priced appropriately for its condition, fixtures and fittings.
